As families prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, it is important to remember that first gathering more than 400 years ago. The community gathered for that meal included approximately 90 Native Americans for whom the 50 or so survivors of the Mayflower must certainly have been thankful.

During that three-day feast there were Puritans, investors, adventurers, natives and newcomers — survivors — determined to show their gratitude and celebrate the newcomers’ first harvest in what was becoming their new home. It was a home in which, despite much hardship, they had been more fortunate than their fellow colonizers in what became the Commonwealth of Virginia.

With the help of the Wampanoag, they learned how to farm, fish and hunt in this New World, and so together the two groups celebrated shared success.

How wonderful that all these centuries later we still gather to celebrate our shared successes. How wonderful that so many of us are able to spend time this holiday with friends and family sharing good food — the recipes for which perhaps go back many generations as well. And how wonderful that many of us can be thankful we have the means to lend a hand to those who are struggling, just as was done for the survivors of the Mayflower all those years ago.

We are communities and a nation richly blessed because we were born out of the idea that if we work together, we will not only survive but thrive. No matter what has tested that ideal over the centuries (and there has been much), it remains as true today as it was then.

On Thanksgiving, then, give thanks not just for the many blessings in your own life — even if they are as simple as good food, family brought together, football on TV (maybe a nap on the couch), and the prospect of a shopping adventure in a day or two.

Give thanks for the knowledge that we are celebrating in a nation built on cooperation among many different peoples who were determined that if they helped one another — if they lifted up one another — there will be much to celebrate.

“We should just be thankful for being together. I think that’s what they mean by Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown.”

— “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving”

“We must find the time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.”

— President John F. Kennedy